Book of Days Tales

On this date in 1379, New College, Oxford, was founded by William of Wykeham.  This is taken from the college’s website:

New College was founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham (1324-1404), bishop of Winchester, as ‘the college of St Mary of Winchester at Oxford’. Almost immediately it became known as ‘New College’ to distinguish it from the other Oxford college dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Oriel (1326).

New College was founded to praise God; support the Faith, pray for the souls of the Founder, his relatives and other benefactors; and to provide higher education for the clergy. Wykeham had risen from modest beginnings in rural Hampshire to become the chief minister of Edward III, his parvenu status being reflected in his self-confident personal motto adopted by his college: ‘Manners Makyth Man’.

Some Oxford colleges are famous for their recipes.  Queen’s college, for example, originated the tradition of the decorated boar’s head for Christmas, and Magdalen college has served specially marinated venison (culled from its deer herd) once a year at a special dinner every year for over 250 years.  These recipes have entered modern cookbooks.  Other colleges’ recipes are less well known, and may not be used nowadays, although they can be found in the college archives.  Such is the case with New College puddings. Recipes can be found in several eighteenth century cookbooks such as this one in English Housewifry by Elizabeth Moxon (1764):

422. To make new COLLEGE PUDDINGS.

Grate an old penny loaf, put to it a like quantity of suet shred, a nutmeg grated, a little salt and some currans, then beat some eggs in a little sack and sugar, mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and size of a turkey’s egg, but a little flatter; take a pound of butter, put it in a dish or stew-pan, and set it over a clear fire in a chafing-dish, and rub your butter about the dish till it is melted, then put your puddings in, and cover the dish, but often turn your puddings till they are brown alike, and when they are enough grate some sugar over them, and serve them up hot.

For a side-dish you must let the paste lie for a quarter of an hour before you make up your puddings.

The entire text of the original book can be found here: http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/book1764moxon.htm

A virtually identical recipe is reported by Janet Clarkson, “the old foodie,” in her excellent blog:, http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2009/07/old-pudding-time.html, taken from Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife (1736), entitled “To make New-College Puddings.” I am ever so slightly perturbed by the lower case “n” in Moxton, making it seem that this is a new recipe for college pudding (a boiled suet pudding reminiscent of Christmas pudding) rather than a recipe from New College.  But I am going to tamp down my qualms and accept that this recipe is, indeed, from New College, even though I asked an old friend who went to New College about them and he said he had never heard of them.  Not surprising; my college has old recipes it never uses, even for special occasions.  Here is my effort at creating the dish.

New College Pudding

Combine 1 cup of breadcrumbs and 1 cup of shredded suet. Rub the flour and suet well together with your fingers as you would for pastry, and then add a small handful of currants and a pinch of salt.  

Mix together 1 egg with an equal volume of sherry (sack) or brandy, 1 tbsp of sugar, and 1 tsp of nutmeg, and add this to the flour/suet mix.  Knead with your hands to form a stiff dough.  Let it rest 15 minutes.

Form into slightly flat egg-shaped balls.

Fry in ½ inch of vegetable oil heated to 325°F/160°C until they are browned on one side, then flip them.  Do this in batches to avoid lowering the temperature of the oil too much, and overcrowding.

Drain on a wire rack and dust with granulated sugar.

They are delicious hot, but a bit heavy cold.  Using self raising flour in place of the breadcrumbs would make them lighter. They screamed to me to be dipped in whipped cream.

I was not willing to spring for 1lb of butter for frying but I did save one pudding to shallow fry in a knob of butter. It was definitely richer and sweeter than those fried in oil.  In future I will shallow fry them all in butter.

Yield: 6 puddings.